The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (review)

Reviews P. N. Furbank and W.R. Owens. The Canonisation ofDaniel Defoe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. viii + 210pp. US$30.00. The title of this book may be viewed as a complex pun, since it is both about the canonization of Defoe as a writer and about the creation of the body of writing that is identified as Defoe's. The reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement expressed surprise that Defoe belonged in the canon at all, since F.R. Leavis had dismissed Defoe's claims in a footnote to The Great Tradition. The real surprise in that remark is that anyone still follows the pronouncements in a work that excluded Fielding and Dickens from the tradition of the English novel and that the many excellent studies of Defoe published over the past three decades should have gone unnoticed. Interest in Defoe has grown steadily since the publication of Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel and, whereas Robinson Crusoe has continued to hold centre stage, claims have been made for Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, Roxana, and even Memoirs ofa Cavalier as important experiments in the art of fiction. Defoe has succeeded in weathering a number of critical fashions, and few would dispute his importance to his age and to ours. But the establishment of the canon is more of a problem. He signed almost none of the more than five hundred and fifty works attributed to him with anything as clear as "by Daniel Defoe." At best we get the initials, "D.F.," or one of his identifying titles such as "by the author of the Review," or "by the author of The True Born Englishman." In his later years he adopted the name Andrew Moretón, and there are numerous titles assigned to him with more general identifications: "a lover of truth," "a Clergyman," or "a Citizen." Furbank and Owens ask the somewhat embarrassing question, "How have such works become part of the Defoe canon and what is the evidence that they ought to be there"? EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 1, Number 2, January 1989 148 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION The answer to this question is simple, "Many got there without adequate reason ." Their book is in three parts. Part I expresses doubts about the methods of ascription as applied to Defoe; Part II investigates the creators of the bibliography over two hundred and fifty years; and Part III suggests some ways of knowing what Defoe wrote. Furbank and Owens have written a very readable and complex investigation of their subject, and in their final chapter, "Towards a New Defoe Bibliography," as well as in the two appendices, they have suggested ways of replacing the present chaos with something more orderly. But, as they admit in their investigation of a number of "stylometric" programs made possible by computer technology, there is nothing available right now that will answer all of our problems. One of their suggestions—that a group of Defoe specialists gather to work out something better than the present canon—may see some practical results in the near future, but they admit to having used a combination of techniques for establishing a more reliable canon, from biographical interpretation to an analysis of style. The complexity of the subject should be apparent, and I will limit myself to commenting on what effect the results of their investigation have on what most specialists in eighteenth-century fiction regard as Defoe's major works of fiction. Are we to dismiss the Defoe who has been the subject of critical interest since the end of the eighteenth century as an illusion, a mere ghost? And if not, why not? For the most part, Furbank and Owens show great tact in this matter. Only Memoirs ofa Cavalier is mentioned, but a sample of their approach might be useful. They write: It is our impressions that the mere fact that a single work strikes one, even strongly, as Defoe-like, is a quite insufficient reason for attributing it to him. Instinct tells us that Memoirs of a Cavalier is a work of fiction by Defoe, and an admirable product of his fictional talent; but if external evidence...